Crash d'Hercules à Eindhoven : Suppositions Mortelles

The airport firefighters had made terrible and unfounded assumptions. They assumed that the Hercules C-130H that had just crashed at Eindhoven Airport was... empty! In other words, that it was carrying cargo. The plane had flown through a flock of birds, causing two of its Alison T56 turboprop engines to shut down (a classic example of a bird strike). Due to a miscommunication between the Italian and Dutch air traffic control (ATC) services, the flight plan did not indicate that there were 41 people on board the Hercules. The firefighters therefore assumed that there were only the standard crew of four (captain, co-pilot, flight engineer, and loadmaster). The military rescue services deployed a minimalist response and made no rescue attempt. They simply extinguished the fire without attempting to open the doors or protect the cabin. They didn't call for more help or backup. The airport's civilian firefighters also had difficulty accessing the crash site due to poor synchronization with the military firefighters. No one knew if the latter had the situation under control or if they needed help. It was almost half an hour later, when the first firefighter managed to open a door of the Hercules, that the horrific reality dawned: there were loads of people on board. This tragedy decimated the Dutch Army Band. The band was performing in Italy for a week in the summer of 1996. Subsequently, the Dutch Army asked the Belgian Army to repatriate them from Rimini to Eindhoven. The few survivors of this tragedy had to fight with the military establishment, the Grande Muette, to try to obtain scraps of information. Despite a file more than a meter thick, the truth about this tragedy was never fully established. The controller at the Eindhoven Airport control tower and the fire chief were suspended and then prosecuted for many years. They were acquitted in 2001 and received an apology and compensation in 2004. Chapters: 00:00 Dutch Band 00:26 The Belgian Air Force CH-06 Hercules 00:40 Eindhoven Airport 01:00 The Hercules C-130H Crew 01:43 The Bird and Bird Scare Hazard 03:20 Landing 04:04 Go-around 04:50 Engine Failure 06:05 Pilot Error 07:20 Loss of Control 08:00 No Passenger Briefing 09:00 Emergency Exits Won't Open 09:50 The Plane Is on Fire 12:10 The Civilian Firefighters Are Trapped 14:20 The Final Report 16:30 Justice 17:40 A Train Crash Story